5 reasons to love the cover of Laini Taylor’s ‘Strange the Dreamer’ plus read the prologue RIGHT NOW!

Laini Taylor, author of the much loved ‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone’ series, has her new spangly book ‘Strange the Dreamer’ expected for release in September. And we cannot wait!

But we have just the thing to whet your appetite! Not only are we inviting you to join us in fangasming over the cover, but you can read the prologue. Right here. Right now.

Are you ready?

Alrighty then. First up, dat cover:

Shiny sparkle much happiness yes! We love the simple yet effective addition of this constellation design. We hope there’s foil involved in the final print edition so we can watch the sun shine off the front of this bad boy.

This is a temporary tattoo waiting to happen.

THE TITLE! Again, simple, but so different! If we can’t have the constellations in foil, then would it be too much to ask for the title? Gold foil. Oh yeah. We’re already fantasizing.

It’s Laini Taylor biatches! As if you don’t already know what that means. But it basically boils down to the word “flawless”.

Not only is this going to fit perfectly into your blue section on your rainbow shelves, the cloud effect is going to really pop when you take hundreds of pictures of it for bookstagram.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

…The prologue.

“On the second sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky.

Her skin was blue, her blood was red.

She broke over an iron gate, crimping it on impact, and there she hung, impossibly arched, graceful as a temple dancer swooning on a lover’s arm. One slick finial anchored her in place. Its point, protruding from her sternum, glittered like a brooch. She fluttered briefly as her ghost shook loose, and then her hands relaxed, shedding fistfuls of freshly picked torch ginger buds.

Later, they would say these had been hummingbird hearts and not blossoms at all.

They would say she hadn’t shed blood but wept it. That she was lewd, tonguing her teeth at them, upside down and dying, that she vomited a serpent that turned to smoke when it hit the ground. They would say a flock of moths had come, frantic, and tried to lift her away.

That was true. Only that.

They hadn’t a prayer, though. The moths were no bigger than the startled mouths of children, and even dozens together could only pluck at the strands of her darkening hair until their wings sagged, sodden with her blood. They were purled away with the blossoms as a grit-choked gust came blasting down the street. The earth heaved underfoot. The sky spun on its axis. A queer brilliance lanced through billowing smoke, and the people of Weep had to squint against it. Blowing grit and hot light and the stink of saltpeter. There had been an explosion. They might have died, all and easily, but only this girl had, shaken from some pocket of the sky.

Her feet were bare, her mouth stained damson. Her pockets were all full of plums. She was young and lovely and surprised and dead.

She was also blue.

Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or dragonfly wings, or a spring—not summer—sky.

Someone screamed. The scream drew others. The others screamed, too, not because a girl was dead, but because the girl was blue, and this meant something in the city of Weep. Even after the sky stopped reeling, and the earth settled, and the last fume spluttered from the blast site and dispersed, the screams went on, feeding themselves from voice to voice, a virus of the air.

The blue girl’s ghost gathered itself and perched, bereft, upon the spearpoint-tip of the projecting finial, just an inch above her own still chest. Gasping in shock, she tilted back her invisible head and gazed, mournfully, up.

The screams went on and on.

And across the city, atop a monolithic wedge of seamless, mirror-smooth metal, a statue stirred, as though awakened by the tumult, and slowly lifted its great horned head.”

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Sarah is the Lead Writer and Design Queen here at Maximum Pop! Sarah holds an MA in Professional Writing from Falmouth University, and a BA in Creative Writing with English Literature from Marjon (BIG UP THE MARJON MASSIVE!). Sarah joined MP! after seeing an advertisement for writers on Instagram – because where else would a design master find their dream job?

Sarah is currently working on an expose on Draco Malfoy in her spare time. But not if his father hears about it.